Archive for August, 2011

The Spiritual Book reviews actually covers ANY book that has any spiritual/religious insight or meaning. Slight Spoiler alert: If you are an ardent believer in God and your personal faith and feel that your faith is sufficient than you may not want to read anymore. I personally believe that God is working everywhere all the time. I believe that God is teaching things in those individual religions for an individual instruction to fulfil that person’s total reunion with God. Sometimes though God wants us to grow in other ways and we may have a path that is less than traditional.

“Dating Jesus” was written by Susan Campbell and published in 2009. In trying to write an honest review I have to be truthful about the less than good things about this book. Please keep in mind though that I feel the book is meaningful and worthwhile to read otherwise I wouldn’t write a review at all.

1. The book could have been longer, it was only 205 pages long.

2. She skips important and meaningful things in her personal life that probably had a direct impact upon her religious/spiritual values.

3. The larger development about her faith is questioned as to whether it crumbled away or a full-blown spiritual realignment occurred.

I believe that the editor and publisher should have compelled a greater input and direction for the answers to the above shortcomings.

There….I got that out-of-the-way. I don’t like being negative but at the same time if it’s the truth I can’t paint over it and let future readers believe that the book is supremely great. It’s just merely GREAT.

I admire Susan Campbell for her courage to write this book. It’s very honest account of growing up in a bedrock, good as gold fundamentalist religion from Missouri, the back bone of middle America. This is not altogether a book about spiritual growth as much as it is a book about the spiritual realizations about her own faith that she was raised to believe in. She still believes in God, but differently.

As a child growing up she followed her faith and did as she was asked. She was Baptised and then Baptized again. He community, her friends were almost all belonging to the same church. She and her friends would proselytize door to door to find new members. Frequently she made clear to others that belief in God and Jesus were not sufficient, that their church was the one true church. Any other church wouldn’t do. She attended church three times a week. That was an important facet of their social world. She became an excellent Bible student and would attend Bible camps. It soon becomes apparent that Susan Campbell does know her Bible because several Bible quotes are referenced throughout the book.

As she states so aptly, “”So begins my memorization of vast snatches of the Bible-Old and New Testament. I can recite the books and the apostles and the Beatitudes.” Her teachers proclaim, “that girl know her Bible.”

Her realizations of unfairness and differences came as she watched her brother ascend to a beginning ministry position. It was made clear that she could never do that or be that. Further dashed hopes were the differences in the sports area. The boys were encouraged and applauded. The girls were merely tolerated. One was real and earnest, the other was just entertainment. When Title IX was enacted to promote equality in high school sports some things even changed. It still took a long time to bring about even a semblance of fairness and equality.

The most important thing that I learned from the book is that in 1909, two bothers named Lyman and Milton Stewart, compiled a number of religious writings of the time and published them as The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth. It was originally a twelve volume tract that essentially defined and gave birth to the beginnings of Fundamentalism. These books were then sent FREE to several ministers, missionaries, YMCA and YWCA secretary’s, College Professors, Church superintendents and other like-minded leading Christians throughout the United States and the World. While many of these ideas are subject to great debate and controversy I believe that the authors intentions were sincere. I am not an advocate of fundamentalism but I understand now how these ideas became so widespread even though many themes have non-existent or debatable reference in the Bible and even the exaltation of the Bible. For more information see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fundamentals.

The other main point of the book is when Susan Campbell goes back to Missouri and visits with her brother and his family. They attend church while she’s there and she sees that it’s different….very different. The church has modern musical instruments while her original church didn’t even have a piano. The choir doesn’t have that familiar closed four-part harmony. It becomes obvious that many members don’t really know their Bible, at least not like her and her brother did when they were kids.

This realization becomes something that she realizes is lost. Not just for others, but herself too. She laments and regrets that at one time she had total and complete conviction, total religious understanding, total purpose and spiritual meaning in her life. There was NOTHING grey or fuzzy or uncertain. Her religious life had purpose, meaning and direction.

In moving from children to adults, in seeing reality intruding, we observe that things are not always what we have been taught. Sometimes, such as in Susan’s case, we question ourselves and the so-called values we’ve been taught. We try to find real answers for real questions.

Many of the things Susan has been through have occurred in many others, myself included. I applaud her courage and vision to dispense with the old even if she doesn’t have a replacement of new values and spiritual understandings. That’s what takes real courage. She didn’t switch, she didn’t just change religions or try something else. She just evolved and grew. That is FAITH. She truly is letting go and letting God work it.

Even with all the things that I think I know, I pray that I will be able to discard my old ideas and rise to new understandings. I know that even now I’m relying on old ideas that are probably just a bridge to new understandings.

I rate this book an 8 out of 10 stars, ********.

Dating Jesus: A Story of Fundamentalism, Feminism, and the American Girl. ISBN: 978-0-8070-1066-2

They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom. Confucius